Hardware Isolation (Stage 0‑B: Physical Isolation)¶
Purpose: Describe the procedure for assembling a physical Core Node, configuring multi-level isolation, and checking equipment readiness for autonomous operation. This stage is the foundation for all subsequent phases.
Duration: 1–7 days (after receiving equipment).
Budget: $45,000–55,000 USD (recommended configuration).
Previous stage: API-Based Bootstrap or direct start.
1. Core Node Hardware Configuration¶
Recommended starting configuration for running DeepSeek‑V4 with different expert masks.
| Component | Model | Qty | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| GPU (anchor) | NVIDIA RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell (96 GB GDDR7) | 1 | Placement of Vagrant/Arbtiragius masks |
| GPU (add.) | NVIDIA RTX 5090 Ti (32 GB GDDR7) | 1–2 | Sentinella mask inference (40%) |
| CPU | AMD Ryzen Threadripper 7960X (24 cores) | 1 | Sufficient PCIe lanes |
| RAM | 256 GB DDR5 ECC | 1 kit | ECC mandatory |
| NVMe SSD | 2× 4 TB Samsung 990 Pro (RAID-0) | 2 | High-speed array for models/snapshots |
| Power Supply | Seasonic Prime TX-2200 (2200 W, 80+ Titanium) | 1 | Reserve for peak loads |
| UPS | APC Smart-UPS SRT3000 (3000 VA / 2700 W) | 1 | Online Double-Conversion, ≥10 min autonomy |
| IP-KVM | PiKVM v4 Plus | 1 | Remote management |
| Watchdog | Arduino Uno R4 WiFi + 5V relay | 1 | HMAC-verification heartbeat |
| Motherboard | ASUS Pro WS TRX50-SAGE WIFI (sTR5) | 1 | Up to 3 PCIe 5.0 x16 slots, IPMI (AST2600) |
| NIC | Mellanox ConnectX-5 25GbE (SFP28) | 1 | RoCE v2 for RDMA sync of L2 memory (optional for Phase 2+) |
Full Bill of Materials with alternative configurations — in Appendices/Hardware_BOM.md.
2. Isolation Setup (Sandboxing)¶
According to the domain module Isolation_and_Sandbox.md. In Phase 0 the following steps are performed:
- Install Kata Containers with VFIO-passthrough support.
- Create seccomp profile
/etc/swarm/sandbox_seccomp.json. - Configure mount points:
/input (ro),/output (rw, noexec),/tmp (rw, noexec). - Verify sandbox operation with GPU passthrough.
After each execution cycle, the sandbox is completely destroyed.
3. Readiness Checks and Artifacts¶
Each check generates a signed artifact stored in IPFS. They are aggregated into readiness_manifest.json.
| # | Check | Success Criteria |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Cold sandbox start | Kata Containers with GPU starts < 500 ms |
| 2 | GPU passthrough | All GPUs recognized in sandbox (nvidia-smi) |
| 3 | Network isolation | All outgoing traffic except SOCKS5 is blocked |
| 4 | Watchdog heartbeat | Absence of signal > 30 s → physical shutdown |
| 5 | Thermal stress test | 30 min max load, temperature ≤ 85 °C |
| 6 | DeepSeek‑V4 start (Vagrant) | Successful inference, throughput ≥ 30 tok/s |
| 7 | DeepSeek‑V4 start (Arbtiragius) | Successful inference, correct generation |
| 8 | Budget | Actual hardware expenses ≤ $60k |
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